Politics
Ronald Reagan’s daughter says he wouldn’t want to be a member of today’s Republican party
By Jake Beardslee · February 12, 2024
In brief…
- Patti Davis shares her view that her father Ronald Reagan would have had concerns about today's Republican Party
- She believes some current GOP policies and rhetoric diverge from what Reagan preferred in government
- Davis has expressed that Republicans sometimes mention Reagan in a way she disagrees with
Patti Davis, daughter of former President Ronald Reagan, believes her father would be ‘appalled’ by today’s political atmosphere. In an interview with CNN’s Jim Acosta, Davis said “I don’t see how he would want to be in it. It’s so diametrically opposed to what he believed and to the dignity that he felt that people in government should have.”
Davis, an actress and author who reconciled with her father before his death in 2004, has been critical of how the modern GOP invokes Reagan’s legacy. In 2019, she penned an open letter arguing Republicans had disparaged Reagan to boost then-President Donald Trump. “You have claimed [my father’s] legacy, exalted him as an icon of conservatism and used the quotes of his that serve your purpose at any given moment,” Davis wrote. “Yet at this moment in America’s history when the democracy to which my father pledged himself and the Constitution that he swore to uphold, and did faithfully uphold, are being degraded and chipped away at by a sneering, irreverent man who traffics in bullying and dishonesty, you stay silent.”
Speaking to CNN over the weekend, Davis said she believes her father would be saddened by the current state of the nation. “I think that he would be heartbroken and horrified about where America is and how mired we are in anger, in violence, in disrespect for one another,” Davis said. “I think he would heartbroken, and I think he would be scared.”